Empathy in Leadership: A Conversation with Maria Ross

In the latest episode of our podcast, we had the pleasure of welcoming back Maria Ross, an empathy advocate, speaker, author, workshop facilitator, and brand strategist. It’s been four years since Maria last joined us, and in that time, she has continued to champion the cause of empathy in leadership and business. Her new book, “The Empathy Dilemma: How Successful Leaders Balance Performance, People, and Personal Boundaries,” delves into the complexities of applying empathy in the workplace, especially in a post-pandemic world.

The Journey to Empathy

Maria’s journey into empathy advocacy began with a life-altering experience. At the age of 35, she suffered a near-fatal brain aneurysm. This unexpected event not only upended her life but also shaped her understanding of empathy. During her recovery, Maria experienced a level of care that was deeply empathetic, which she later discovered was part of a broader philosophy known as patient and family-centred care. This approach places the patient and their family at the centre of the care experience, ensuring they feel seen, heard, and valued.

Empathy in Healthcare

Maria’s insights into the healthcare system reveal how empathy can be operationalised to improve patient outcomes. She explains that empathy in healthcare isn’t just about individual interactions but about creating a culture where empathy is embedded in every aspect of care. This includes training staff to address patients by their names, explaining procedures before they are carried out, and ensuring that every member of the care team, from doctors to janitors, understands the importance of empathy.

Empathy in Business

The conversation then shifts to the application of empathy in the business world. Maria emphasises that empathy is not just a moral imperative but a practical one. It can lead to better performance, lower costs, and improved employee and customer satisfaction. However, she also acknowledges the challenges of measuring empathy and its impact. Maria suggests that businesses need to define what empathy looks like in their specific context and map it to observable behaviours and outcomes.

Resilience and Empathy

Maria also touches on the connection between empathy and resilience. She argues that self-awareness and self-care are crucial for building resilience, which in turn enables individuals to be more empathetic. In a world where people are constantly tested by various challenges, building resilience is more important than ever. Maria suggests that organisations can help build resilience by creating opportunities for employees to step out of their comfort zones and face challenges head-on.

Psychological Safety

The discussion also covers the concept of psychological safety, which is closely linked to empathy. Maria points out that psychological safety is a two-way street. Leaders need to create an environment where employees feel safe to express their thoughts and concerns, but employees also need to understand that leaders have their best interests at heart. This mutual trust is essential for fostering a truly empathetic workplace.

Conclusion

Maria Ross’s insights into empathy in leadership and business are both profound and practical. Her new book, “The Empathy Dilemma,” offers valuable guidance for leaders looking to balance performance, people, and personal boundaries. For those interested in learning more, Maria can be reached through her website, [The Empathy Dilemma](https://theempathydilemma.com), where you can purchase her book or download a free chapter. You can also connect with her on Instagram at @redslice.maria or on LinkedIn.

In a world where empathy is often overlooked, Maria’s work serves as a powerful reminder of its importance and its potential to transform both individuals and organisations.

Please send me your questions — as an audio file if you’d like — to nminterdial@gmail.com. Otherwise, below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate it here.

To connect with Maria Ross:

• Check out Maria Ross’ site here
• Find/buy Maria’s book, “The Empathy Dilemma,” here
• Find/follow Maria Ross on LinkedIn
• Find/follow @redslice on X (formerly Twitter)

Other mentions/sites:

• Here was my first interview of Maria Ross (2020)

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue podcast:

brand strategist | business empathy | diversity and inclusion | empathy activist | empathy advocate | empathy dilemma | empathy edge | empathy in business | empathy in the workplace | empathy workshops | family-centred care | healthcare empathy | hospital empathy | human-centred leadership | kind candor | leadership empathy | leadership training | Maria Ross | organisational culture | patient experience | patient-centred care | post-pandemic challenges | psychological safety | radical candor | radical success | resilience and empathy | ROI of empathy | self-awareness | self-care | trust in leadership

Transcription courtesy of Flowsend.ai, an AI full-service for podcasters

Minter Dial: Maria Ross, how lovely to have you back on my zoom, back on my podcast. It’s been four years since.

Maria Ross: Has it been that long?

Minter Dial: Yeah, it’s absolutely. It’s absolutely dead crazy. So, back four years ago, you had written the empathy edge, and you’re at it again. In between, we had a chance to hang out in real life. I continue to follow all your work and participate with you everywhere we can as empathy activists. But in your own words, Maria, who be you?

Maria Ross: Well, it’s a pleasure to be here again with you, Minter. I feel like we haven’t left, but we are always crossing paths and getting in each other’s orbits. But, yeah, I am an empathy activist, empathy advocate, I like to say a speaker, an author, a workshop facilitator, and a brand strategist, which is my background, helping people connect and engage with the people who matter most. And that naturally tends to lead to empathy, because empathy is a marketer’s superpower. And that’s sort of how I got into this world of empathy. Advocacy is researching the bright spots, researching the leaders and the brands and the cultures who were winning with empathy, which was what my first book, The Empathy Edge, my first empathy book spoke about the empathy edge. And that was really the business case for empathy. For the sceptics, it was the ROI. And from that work, from doing keynotes and leadership trainings and all of that, what I’ve heard from people is, this is great. We’re sold on this whole human-centered leadership thing, but here’s where it gets hard. And so, this next book that’s out will be out in a few short weeks after, you know, when this airs, is The Empathy Dilemma, how successful leaders balance performance, people and personal boundaries. Because that’s a. That’s where the rub is. Everyone thinks empathy at work is a good idea. They’re starting to understand the ROI and the performance benefits that it brings. But one, it’s still challenging to apply it in the workplace, and two, we’re living in a post-pandemic world where there’s a lot of challenges that leadership didn’t necessarily have 5, 10, 20 years ago. So, I am here to help folks embrace empathy to achieve radical success. 

Minter Dial: Wonderful. And you do that with your red slice, which naturally corresponds to some kind of hair color, right?

Maria Ross: Indeed. Indeed.

Minter Dial: Right. Well, so, obviously, we’re going to talk about the empathy dilemma, and I really enjoyed the book, and I think it’s very relevant to be talking about performance at the same time as empathy. And, of course, but I want to get into that. But I wanted to. Something we didn’t really talk about in our last podcast was actually essentially what got you into empathy, as I read it, which is you’re rebooting my brain and the brain aneurysm you had and how that sculpted or informed you as a person. I tend to think that once you’ve had a, a fairly gruesome or life changing experience, it has a way of changing our minds. But the issue is, well, some people wait until they have the experience to actually figure out what’s all about. Anyway, tell us. Talk us through your rebooting my brain, because that’s an interesting story.

Maria Ross: Yeah, that was actually one of the streams that led into the, I’m going to mix metaphors, but the perfect storm of why I had to write the first empathy book, that was definitely a big part of it. And I had, you know, to summarize rebooting my brain, I had a near fatal brain aneurysm at the age of 35. Unexpected, very healthy, very active, and just an unexpected injury, as many brain injuries are. And it upended my life. It had upended my husband’s life. We’d only been married about two years at the time. No children, but a dog, a fur baby, and, yeah, I basically didn’t know this until later, but I did defy the odds. My injury was something that doctors hesitate to use the word miraculous, but in talking with my brain surgeon, the one who ultimately saved my life, he said it was actually absolutely remarkable recovery. And he said, you’re one of those cases. That is the reason I got into medicine, is to see you thriving and to see you actually back into your family and into your life again. So, it was a difficult recovery. Luckily, I had resources and I had the proper rehab, and we educated ourselves. We learned more about the brain than we ever hoped to. And I got back to my life again, albeit with certain cognitive deficits that I’ve learned to manage around and things that still. 

Minter Dial: Does that mean you get affected by gin and tonics?

Maria Ross: Yes. Luckily, that was not part of the healing, was don’t drink anymore. Right? It’s like, yes, yes, yes, we understand all this. Can I still drink wine? Is that okay? Luckily, it is. So, yeah. Whew. But through that experience, I became an advocate. I became a patient advocate at the hospital that saved my life. And what I discovered kind of behind the scenes was all the empathy I experienced, all the wonderful little things that added up to this experience where I felt seen, heard, and valued, and I truly believe helped me heal, was not an accident. It wasn’t that I just got lucky to have a bunch of really nice people on my care team. It was that this hospital, along with many hospitals around the world, engaged in a philosophy called patient and family-centered care. And shocking, they put the patient and the family at the center of the care experience. But part of that is understanding the experience from their point of view and putting policies and procedures and training and communication into practice to understand that point of view and make it a better experience, because as many of these things, it actually impacts their bottom line to do so. So, not only are they doing a good thing for the patient, they’re doing a good thing for the clinicians, creating an environment where empathy can be fostered and rewarded and celebrated, but it actually leads to better outcomes. It leads to better health outcomes for their patients, it leads to less readmittance rates, it leads to less accidents. All of these things that when you actually take the time and look at things from your quote, unquote, customer’s point of view or patient’s point of view or client’s point of view, you can create an experience that. That transforms them, but also has them shouting your praise from the rooftops. And so, I found that really intriguing of the fact that we often think of hospitals as a very bureaucratic organization. If they could make it work at scale, then no one had any excuse why they couldn’t make it work at scale. And it might seem a little cold to say, well, we’re implementing these things for us to increase our profits and lower our costs. But I will tell you, as a patient, I didn’t give a damn. My experience was still wonderful, and my care team was happy to be able to operate in a way where they could give really human-centered care to their patients. So, it was kind of a win-win all around. And that was my message with the first book. Is that, okay, if the moral argument is not working for you, that you should embrace empathy in the workplace or in your life, in your community? Let’s look at some data that shows that it will actually benefit you. And then once you become empathetic, for whatever reason, got you there, you can’t unsee another person’s point of view. You’re already. You’re already on the same side of the table as them, and it changes you. It transforms you from the outside in.

Minter Dial: There’s a lot of different thoughts that crossed my mind. As you were. I was listening to you, Mariah. So, the first is, I have talked about empathy in the medical, in the hospital location with my sister and three different hospitals on the east coast, and from the back door or within the hospital administration, you talked about bureaucracy. It’s pretty clear that they struggle to find the energy and the time to be empathic. There’s, on the one hand, the time component, which requires asking questions, being neutral, listening and reformulating and making the patient feel heard. But I also know I’ve got to see 25 patients in 2 hours. And some people come into the hospital, and it’s the first time they’ve had someone taking care of them, and they just want to wax on and go on and on. And it’s very quick to say, oh, well, my doctor wasn’t very empathic because they didn’t listen to me wax on and whine for 25 minutes. Right. So, this notion of empathy in a medical environment where you would have thought it is, of course, to happen, has been rubbed out of the medical core, not just because of a lack of time, but also issues like lawsuits and a fairly gritty, grimy approach from the government and patient perspective, not to have reverse or, you know, contributory kind of empathy with the medical corps. And then there’s the medicine, then the empathy between the doctor and the nurses. The one who you see much more is going to be the people who take care of you afterwards. So, unpack that for me.

Maria Ross: I would love to, because there actually, there are studies that show that if patients rate their caregivers as empathetic, there’s a. There’s a correlation there between, or causation. I always get that confused that there are less malpractice suits filed against those. Those doctors, even if the outcomes are the same. So, it really has to do. And it’s funny because in the business world, there’s a statistic. Around 97% of customers view empathy as the most important part of the customer experience, and in some cases, even if their problem is not actually solved. So, there’s something in there for us to learn around. The way people feel in the interaction is just as important as what they get out of the interaction. Secondly, I would say this is why that philosophy of patient and family centered care is so important, because we can’t just rely on the individuals to show all the empathy in their short and hurried interactions with people. But if you can create a culture and you create an infrastructure around people that shows empathy in various different facets, and I’ll give you an example, they are trained to call every patient by their name when they enter their room to actually say, hello, Maria. I am doctor so and so introduce themselves. I am the nurse, I am the janitor. Right. They are also trained as part of their protocols to explain everything they’re going to do to you before they do it. Assuming your conscious. Right? So, I had vision problems while I was in the hospital. I was temporarily blind for the six weeks that I was in the hospital because of the severity of my haemorrhage. So, someone would come in and I would vaguely make out of shape, but I didn’t know what they were going to do. I didn’t know if they were going to like poke me in the head, raise my arm, and every single person to a fault would say, this is what I’m going to do, this is what I’m going to administer. I’m going to give you a shot now, and this shot is going to be for XDev. So, it’s spreading the workload, it’s spreading the burden across all these different people. It’s allowing me to choose which meals I wanted at breakfast, lunch and dinner, which in a moment when you’re completely vulnerable and powerless is a small victory of, I have some say, yeah, I have some agency. And all of those different ideas, there’s a ton more. But all of those came from having patient advisors like me on their patient and family centered care committees to say, tell us where the friction was, tell us what the experience was like. Tell us what your discharge experience was like. How can we streamline that? What other communications or education materials would have been useful for you at this point in time? So, you’re spreading it. So, it’s not just the 15 or 20 minutes, if you’re lucky, that you get with the actual doctor, but it’s an ethos, it’s a culture that you’re creating for everyone, whether they deal with direct patient care or not. Because I will tell you, even when dealing with billing and accounting, it was a similar experience. So, everyone is trained on this. And eventually I was part of their orientations, their new hire orientations, where I would share my patient story, and there were everyone from actual surgeons in those to cafeteria workers and helping them understand that when you do come in contact with a patient or their family, whether on the phone or in person, no one can ever say, that’s not my job. You will help them find the person that will help them. You have an impact. If you’re a cafeteria worker and you’re having a bad day and you’re being rude to someone buying a coffee, you don’t know if that person just found out their wife has terminal cancer. So, the training and the protocols and the communications and the processes. I know process is sometimes a dirty word, but you can actually operationalize empathy so that burden doesn’t just fall on an individual. That you cross your fingers and you hope and pray is really nice, which, as you and I both know, being nice is not the same as being empathetic and seeing someone’s point of view. So, I think that’s the difference in many of the hospitals that can make it work. It doesn’t take away that they’re overworked. It doesn’t take away that there’s still a lot of bureaucracy and paperwork. But I think when you spread it across the culture, you’re less reliant on one or two individuals in the entire chain of interaction being the only ones that should or can exhibit empathy.

Minter Dial: All right, so that system, the processes, it strikes me that if the president of the hospital isn’t being empathic with the surgeons and the surgeons aren’t being empathic with the anaesthetist or the nurses or the janitor, how do they, as a system, then follow on? Because I think it dries up very quickly if you’re not feeling that others are being empathic with you, including, by the way, patients.

Maria Ross: Right. Well, I think it’s true, not just in a hospital environment, but any organization where temperatures can run high, stress can get to people. People are showing up with different things from their personal life at any given moment. And so, that’s where I think, you know, the work that you do and the work that I do is so important to help people understand that empathy is a two-way street. First of all, it doesn’t just, it’s not just from the leaders to the staff. And that’s it. It’s got to run in both directions, and we have to help people along. We have to give them tools and practices and habits that help them strengthen their empathy, because we don’t know what their starting point is. Right. If you grew up in a very loving, nurturing, empathetic family home, and empathy was modeled, empathy was rewarded, it was celebrated. You’re coming into the workforce with a very different perspective on how to treat people than someone who’s come from an environment where it was all about competition, it was about survival. It was about, you know, you take care of your own, watch your back, whatever that environment. And add on top of that, we all have worked in different work environments. So, even the person that comes from the strong background of empathy, if they get into a workplace culture that, I hate this phrase, but beats it out of them, where ooh. That’s not how you find success here. That’s not part of the norm. That’s not part of the unsaid rules that muscle atrophies. So, the more we can do to help everyone at every level understand what empathy means, how to strengthen it within themselves and help them understand within their specific organization or industry what it looks like, how do we actually apply it? So, I talk a lot in my workshops about delivering difficult performance reviews, or how do you do layoffs with compassion. You still have to make tough decisions as an organization. And going back to your hospital analogy, I might be a doctor who still has to tell a patient that they’ve got six months to live. But how I do it and the support I provide for them around that decision or that news that needs to be made is the game changer. That’s where we get the difference of, I might not like the outcome, but I still feel okay about the experience I’ve had.

Minter Dial: All right, I want to do one little thing. I want to come back to what you just talked about next, but your patients. And a doctor comes in and says, I got good news and bad news. And, you know, the. The good news, it’s. It’s operable.

Maria Ross: Mm hmm.

Minter Dial: Okay. And the bad news? Well, you’re still going to die. You know, talking about is transparency.

Maria Ross: Yeah.

Minter Dial: And. And we tend to think or equate transparency with how to get trust. But sometimes lying, I think, can be the empathic approach, or at least not saying the full truth. But that sounds devious and manipulative. So, I was wondering how you wanted to react to that.

Maria Ross: Wow. Well, I would ask you for an example of that. I’m sure there is an example of where would lying be the empathetic option.

Minter Dial: All right, well, I have a specific example, which is, in France, they will not tell someone who is dying that they’re dying. They will, on the other hand, tell the progeny, or the closest relative. By the way, your father, Minter, is about to die. We haven’t told him, because if we tell him, then he’s going to die quicker. Because if we don’t tell him, that way he can pretend or has hope that he might still live. So, the onus, then, is on the son, or whatever, the other family member.

Maria Ross: The truth.

Minter Dial: That’s an example. A real-life example. I have a specific in mind, but the truth is that, I mean, first of all, they don’t necessarily know everything. On the other hand, the medical profession tends to wish to tell you the entire list of possible secondary effects, which they do in advertisements with pharmaceuticals under the guise of transparency. And it just doesn’t feel like trustworthiness.

Maria Ross: So, I guess what I would say to that is, I think this is where we need to understand that empathy is not about what, you know, do unto others as I would have done unto me, but do unto others as they would have done unto them. So, I think that there’s. That’s where you got to get the platinum rule. The platinum rule, right? And so that’s where I think we’ve got to understand the person in front of us. And for someone like me, and I can give you a real example, because years after my initial brain injury, I had another aneurysm that I already knew about from the initial emergency room visit that I was getting monitored every year. And it got to a point in 2019, about a month after my book launched, that we decided to do a proactive surgery to go in and clip it before it ruptured and caused all the mayhem that the first one did. Right. Because it’s the rupturing of it that can tend to cause the problem, the haemorrhage. And we went back and forth for several months with our neurosurgeon about whether to do one type of surgery that was less invasive but might be less effective, or the other surgery that was way more invasive with more risk, removing a part of your skull that was probably going to be more effective. And we asked him to be transparent with us, like, we have to make this decision, so we need all the facts. My husband is a very data driven guy, so for him, hiding something like that would have been detrimental. That would not have been the empathetic thing, because what he needs is information and data. And for me, knowing all the information actually activates my fight. So, that. But that’s me, right? A different person. If they’re more delicate, if they’re more sensitive, if they’re a highly sensitive person. And I know it’s difficult to judge, and so, as a doctor, you may not know that person that well, but I still believe that there’s room for opportunity there. That’s such a strange thing I’ve never heard of before. Maybe in the US because of HIPAA laws, that would be. I don’t know if that’s frowned upon. Right? But I do know the data around people that think their outcome is going to be good and they tend to have better outcomes. But that’s where I think we need to understand that empathy is a little bit. There is a little bit of personalization that has to come with empathy. And it might be the empathetic choice not to tell that person because that’s what they need to in that very dark scenario, that’s what they need to survive. So, I don’t know that there’s a clean answer for that, but I think what’s not the right answer is the blanket answer for all, because we are also different.

Minter Dial: That’s right. But that’s what a process typically leads to. This is how we have to do things. This is in rule number one. Rule number two, we all follow this code, whatever that code might be. And the challenge is then going off pieced and being personalized and saying, well, this person says he wants to know the truth, but actually, I don’t think so, you know, because the truth is maybe harder than you actually know. And you know. So, it’s a very trick anyway. But it’s an interesting zone to be talking about because it is.

Maria Ross: Yeah.

Minter Dial: What we want to be talking about is empathy and business, which is where we. We typically are focused. But of course, running a hospital, especially in the US, it’s a business.

Maria Ross: Right, right.

Minter Dial: It’s money and pharmaceuticals and such.

Maria Ross: And by the way, I spoke with a few first responders in the new book, as you saw. I spoke with a former police chief, I spoke with one of my neurosurgeons, and I spoke with a woman who used to be an emergency room nurse. And it was interesting because they don’t shut off their empathy in those crisis situations. It’s just that they have gotten very skilled at understanding when it’s detrimental and they need to not focus on it and when it’s required and they need to bring it to bear. And so, there’s some pretty stark examples in the book, but it’s this idea that sometimes the choice, kind of going back to your example in France, of not telling the patient they’re going to die, sometimes these choices and these protocols are made that on the outside can seem very unempathetic, but they’re being made with the intent to do the right thing by the person being impacted. And so, that’s where we get into muddy waters. Right. But it depends on your job. It depends on your role in whatever organization you’re in, whatever industry you’re in. For example. Let’s talk about an example a lot of people can relate to. Right. Your two-year-old is about to stick a fork in a outlet. Right? An active outlet. Is that the time for you to sit and talk to them about making choices? No. You’re going to smack that fork away from the child and pull the child away from that situation. Is that the most empathetic thing you can do? Maybe not, but is it the necessary thing you need to do? Yes. In that moment. Now, it requires a follow up conversation. So, you know, in, in that scenario, this is such an interesting example that you’ve given me, mentor, because I had not heard of this. This law, this process before.

Minter Dial: It’s not a law.

Maria Ross: It begs so many questions.

Minter Dial: It’s a way.

Maria Ross: It’s a way of protocol. Okay.

Minter Dial: Yeah. In this particular hospital, perhaps. And in any event, I’m close to the person who had to deal with it. So, it was a whole lot of weight on him because on top of that, his father did die shortly, but kept on talking about, I can’t wait to go on holidays with you, and. But the thought was a good intention. Well, if he has hope, he might. Might yet live. It’s complicated.

Maria Ross: I mean, and maybe that circles back around to empathy, though, is the empathetic thing, is to let someone keep hope. Right?

Minter Dial: Yeah. And I mean, but it’s also in an ecosystem, right? You’re, you’re, you know, you’re part of a team. And whether it’s the doctor with the team in surgery or in an, in a building, your, your person, you might be empathetic with one individual, but that has an organizational impact. If I’m being not, you know, quote unquote, I’m listening to you, but I don’t have time to listen to anyone else.

Maria Ross: Yeah. Yeah. It’s. It’s hard. It’s hard.

Minter Dial: So, one of the, I mean, there are many things that we could talk about, but I certainly appreciate Maria always in, in your style and the way you approach this whole idea of empathy is that you do stick to this notion of pragmatism performance, as opposed to being sort of an idealist around empathy. And I think that’s the challenge in this idea of pushing empathy, is that whether it’s a moralistic or an idealistic approach, it just can’t cut through, especially the red tape or the bureaucracy or the challenges of real business. So, finding ways to speak about it in a good way. So, let’s. Let’s talk about a couple of extra things. First is, and something you and I have much talked about, the idea of measuring empathy for any business person. They always want to know the ROI and how much, you know, if I put this much money in, how much are going to get out. If you can’t measure it doesn’t matter. Whatever all these other different thoughts and permutations. But you’ve certainly thought about this and written about it. And how do you describe the idea if in front of you, let’s say I’m a CEO, you wanted to explain to me, mentor, you need to bring empathy into your business. And let me tell you, here’s the ROI, or at least here’s how you can measure the benefit.

Maria Ross: Mm hmm. So, I think I would have that conversation backwards. Firstly, it would be around what are your goals and what are the metrics you’re looking to improve or metrics you’re looking to, you know, if it’s lowering costs or whatever it is, I would go at it from there and then see where there are opportunities for culture change, mindset change, a leadership change to impact that metric. Right. It won’t always impact every metric that an organization has to measure. That might come under the realm of product development, product innovation, pricing, distribution, other more practical, tangible things, but where you can see that there’s issues that can be impacted by culture change or leadership style change, that’s where I then dig into the conversation. So, two things about the measurement, and by the way, mentor, you and I have talked, this is not a nut I’ve been able to crack either. But what I’ve seen from some successful companies is, number one, defining, first of all, defining what your objective or your outcome is. Your objective, and your outcome is not empathy. Empathy is the means by which you want to achieve that outcome or objective. See what you know, see previous statement. So, what is it you’re actually trying to measure? But also when you think empathy, increased empathy in your leaders or in your culture, or even towards your customers, is one way to get the outcome you’re trying to measure, you need to have a clear definition within your organization that we all understand what we mean by empathy. And some organizations call it service, other organizations call it customer return visits or satisfaction. They call it something else other than empathy. So, you have to decide the language for your organization of what it is we’re actually trying to implement and measure against the outcome we’re trying to achieve. Can we map this initiative that we’re putting behind what we mean by empathy? Because everything has to have an initiative behind it, whether it’s programmatic, whether it’s policy, whether it’s a change in hiring, whatever it is, what is the action you’re taking that you’re hoping will lead to the outcome? But if we don’t understand what we’re defining as empathy, we won’t know the right actions to take. So, if my definition of empathy means which is an incorrect definition of we’re just going to make everybody happy and we want 100% scores on our employee engagement surveys, which will never happen.

Minter Dial: Good luck.

Maria Ross: That’s a very different thing than to say we’re defining empathy by these following behaviors. And this is what I love about Airbnb, for example, because they have mapped their value of service, which is kind of their definition of empathy, to specific example behaviors. Christus Health is an organization in the US, a medical organization in the US, that does the same thing. They have their core values, but they’ve mapped actual actions and behaviors that show that value in action. So, when they are evaluating someone on their performance review, or they’re looking at the outcome of certain initiatives to see what went into them, they know exactly what that’s supposed to look like and what actions or triggers or protocols or policies to execute to achieve it. So, kind of a mish mash in there. But number one is trying to understand what your goals and objectives are and where empathy can play a role in helping you achieve those. Empathy is not the end goal. It’s not the end objective to say, one of our objectives this year is for our company to be more empathetic. Empathy leads to something. What do you want it to lead to? And then within your organization, how are you going to define what empathy looks like in action? So, we can evaluate people’s performance against it. We can put policies and practices into action around it, give us examples of what the organization means by that.

Minter Dial: Yeah, and so it can’t be, well, empathy is going to lead to more performance, as in, that’s the outcome. It has to be a little bit more granular. And what I was enjoying about listening to you, Maria, is this. You have companies that have their values, and hopefully they only have three, but then they should break down each of these values into behaviors. Behaviors, observable behaviors. And that’s where you can sort of seed in the empathic version of that behavior. So, let’s say integrity. Well, we think integrity means this is the. This is the observable behavior of having integrity. I am the same person as I am in the shower, as I am at work, and try to find ways to have empathy sewed into that definition. Yes. So, empathy isn’t a value, it’s a glue or a material.

Maria Ross: It’s a fuel.

Minter Dial: A fuel.

Maria Ross: And that’s why, you know, that’s where it’s so closely linked to efforts like inclusion and belonging, because there are all these initiatives around that. But if you don’t change the mindset and you don’t change the way people are actually interacting with each other. You still just have a bunch of really different people sitting around a table who don’t understand each other. You need empathy to enable the benefits of diversity, equity and inclusion to manifest within your organization, to be able to get the benefit of those different points of view and those different lived experiences, and to enable someone to come to work without fear, to come to work as their whole self so they can innovate and be creative. But that fuel is really about how do we interact with each other, how do we understand each other, and how do we listen to each other so that we hear the good ideas that come out of diversity and inclusion.

Minter Dial: Right? So, two last zones might have to be a little shorter, but the first is in your book, you talk a fair amount about resilience, that it starts with self-care. It strikes me, Maria, that we are living in a world where people are less and less resilient. That’s my observation, and I’m just wondering to what extent we can correct that. How do we. Because, I mean, the end of the day for me, Maria, I have this belief that resilience is built on experience. So, if you experience tough things and you get through the shit and you have developed a competency on which you can draw when you have next to deal with some horrible or difficult situation, whatever. So, how does empathy, what’s the connection or the equation of empathy and resilience?

Maria Ross: So, it’s interesting, because I really feel like there’s the first two pillars really impact resilience. It’s self-awareness and self-care, which is a little ironic that we’re talking about empathy for other people, but the first two pillars involve yourself, because as you and I both propose, when we are out talking, you’ve got to get your own house in order before you can be empathetic and be able to take in another person’s point of view without fear or defensiveness. So, this is a really interesting question, mentor, because this is something I’m struggling with, with raising my son, who’s ten, and how do you build resilience with someone who pretty much can get anything they need? Right? And so I think, first to your question about does it feel like we’re living in a world where there’s less resilience? I think that’s true, but I think it’s true because we’re dealing with a lot of crap right now. It’s just. It’s coming at us from all directions, whether it’s family, whether it’s medical, whether it’s political, whether it’s cultural. I saw a quote. Someone said, like, living in unprecedented times is highly overrated. Right. Because it is. We’re being tested constantly. But there’s opportunities, as you said, in that testing to build that resilience muscle. And so, sometimes, and this is what I’m dealing with, my son, we have to manufacture moments or engineer moments or tasks that build that resilience if it’s not just naturally occurring. Right? So, one way, this is a random example, but we’re putting our son in a baseball league with a team that’s actually competing at the state tournament this week. He has not played baseball in, like, three years. Right. And we’ve talked to him. He’s a little nervous about it, but he wants to be with this group of kids. And so, we’re like, you know what? This could be a really great experience for you. To learn how to accept your weaknesses, to learn how to build up in a specific skill, to learn how to not give up, to learn how to take advice from people and change course and change tactic. So, we’re trying to find those opportunities for him versus, you know, throwing him out in the wild for two weeks with no food and a backpack. Right. I think we all, as adults, can find ways to build that resilience. Learning a new skill, learning a new language, putting ourselves into a group where we feel uncomfortable getting out of that comfort zone, I think, is what builds our resilience, because, like you said, it provides the friction. It provides the tough environment you need where you don’t just get to coast. You have to actually engage. You have to think, you have to pivot. You have to deal with being not good at something. And I think when we. If it’s not happening in our lives, if it’s not happening in our organizations, we do need to engineer those moments for people. Sometimes we call them stretched goals. Sometimes we, you know, we promote someone who’s, like, 70% of the way ready, but not, you know, 100%, giving them the opportunity to feel that friction and build the resilience necessary. But I’m with you. I don’t know how you build resilience unless you’re actually experiencing something through which you have to be resilient. So, the best I can come up with is engineering those moments and engineering your life in a way that puts you in those uncomfortable situations and building that muscle.

Minter Dial: Yeah, it strikes me that we should also be adding into that, removing some of the precautionary elements, because in the end of the day, to the extent that we care, we love. But then if we care so much that we feather everything, we put helmets at all times on all potential options. And that’s why I think sports is a tremendous fertile ground to gain resilience for you. You learn how to lose. You learn how to get hit.

Maria Ross: You learn how to be disappointed.

Minter Dial: Yeah. And that builds resilience.

Maria Ross: Mm hmm.

Minter Dial: It doesn’t make you a loser. It’s just, you know, hopefully you pick yourself up, because that’s what it’s really about.

Maria Ross: Well, think about it from an organizational point of view. You have, you have a team, you’re a leader. You’ve got workers. You’re not doing their work for them. And if you are, you have other issues, you’re micromanage. But the point is, you’ve got to give people a chance. You’ve got to give people a chance to shine, and you got to give people a chance to fail. And the difference in the empathetic culture versus the non-empathetic culture is, is it safe to fail here? Will I be mentored around it? Will I be supported? Yeah.

Minter Dial: And that is the last question, which is the notion of psychological safety. You know, we both know Minette Norman, and both are very familiar, you and I, of this concept, and yet I feel like we’re very far away from that. There’s the psychological safety of. Of a diverse mindset or diverse neuro person. The idea of saying, you know, mentor, I’m really not happy with your work, and I’m not. I should feel safe enough to say that as a leader. Right. Because, you know, today’s world, it’s like, well, you know, who are you to tell me that? Oh, I feel hurt.

Maria Ross: I’m. Yeah, right.

Minter Dial: So, this is a kind of a different type of zone of psychological, but there surely is empathy in the way you say things. But in categorizing psychological safety, just like empathy, oftentimes it’s almost only one way, as in the, the boss has to be empathic with you.

Maria Ross: Right. And it’s a two-way street.

Minter Dial: You need to have you, as the employee, should feel psychological safety to say whatever’s on your mind, and yet the other way around it, sorry, doesn’t come back. And I feel like that’s a whole other gig.

Maria Ross: It’s a whole other gig. But that also comes down to trust. Like, I’ve worked for managers who could tell me, you really screwed that up. And I can laugh about it. I can, because I know there’s trust built there. I know they’re not going to let me fail. And I know they actually have my best interest at heart. And I mention this in the book, a story of a company that was having trouble with return to work. And they were like, we think we have an empathy problem. And I’m like, actually, you don’t. You guys have been extremely empathetic. You have a trust problem. There’s something in what’s going on in this environment that they don’t trust that you’re making the best decision for everyone. They’re just not trusting in that decision. So, I think trust and psychological safety are very closely linked, but it’s also about understanding that. I love what you said about it going both ways, but there’s also something we talk about, radical candor. And I much prefer what Claude Silver says at Vayner Media. She’s their chief heart officer that I interviewed on my podcast, the Empathy Edge. And they don’t call it radical candor, their global ad agency. They call it kind candorous, because too often we have fallen into this trap of people being extremely hurtful and direct and saying, I’m just being honest, I’m just being candid. And there’s a way that you can be candid and still get the same results without burning everything down to the ground and burning the relationship down to the ground. I’m not saying you have to sugarcoat, but you can be direct and confident and compassionate with someone when you’re delivering negative news. And that is actually a skill whoever can develop the workshop for that is something I’ll sign up for, and I think other people should sign up for, too. But I think it’s linked to empathy. It’s linked to. I want to think about how I’m going to communicate this because of, not just because it’s hard to communicate, but how it will be received. It doesn’t mean I avoid the conversation, it doesn’t mean I sugarcoat it, but I can have kind candor around it.

Minter Dial: It feels to me, Maria, in what you just described, it, really. Actually, you deliver this through the five pillars of empathic leadership, because first of all, there’s this knowledge of me, self-awareness, I’m in a shitty mood. Self-care, take care of me. If I take care of me, then I, and I express myself in a clear way to you, it makes its obvious I’m not being doubtful or wishy washy, and then I’m being decisive, which shows firmness and fairness. And then you bring a little bit of joy. This is the kindness you talk about, right? Your flight pillars are right on. All right, Maria, we’ve. We’ve run over. How did that happen? Well, gosh, that’s no surprise.

Maria Ross: We’re always jibber jabbering.

Minter Dial: That’s right. The empathy dilemma from page two. Great friends up in the northwest there, how successful leaders balance performance, people, and personal boundaries. How can people get in touch with you and get your book and. Yes.

Maria Ross: Well, I hope they’ll go to the empathydilemma.com. they can purchase the book, or if they’re not ready, they can download a free chapter. They can connect with me on Instagram, @RedSliceMaria, or on LinkedIn. Just tell me you heard me on Mentors podcast when you reach out. And, yeah, I’m always available to do talks and keynotes and leadership trainings to help teams be more successful as ever 

Minter Dial: Maria, it’s always fun to chat with you because I feel like I come out of it stronger, better person myself.

Maria Ross: Same, same. 

Minter Dial: Good luck with everything, and we’ll see you soon, I hope.

Maria Ross: Thank you.